The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas, page 25
362. Or the Unabomber’s cabin? When I first read Daniel’s description of Maas’s apartment, I was reminded of news reports about the discovery of Ted Kaczynski’s cabin in the woods near Lincoln, Montana, after his arrest by the FBI following his twenty year bombing campaign. Kaczynski, a former mathematics prodigy, had turned his back on academia and disappeared, in 1969. He spent the next two decades living in his cabin, writing his manifesto and planning his bombing campaign which would kill three and injure more than twenty. Inside his cabin FBI officers found highly descriptive journals detailing all of his crimes, as well as bomb parts and other paraphernalia. Bizarrely, the cabin is now preserved in its entirety as a museum piece (on loan from the FBI) in the Newseum, Washington DC. Only in America, as they say – Anonymous.
363. In 2016, The New York Times reported the story that Bob Dylan’s long rumoured secret archives of notebooks, lyrics, correspondence, films, photographs, and other material, had been privately bought by a consortium of US institutions for $15 – $20m. This collection of 6,000 pieces included a trinity of notebooks, which had been kept in climate-controlled storage and whose existence had previously been known only to Dylan’s closest friends and family. One of these notebooks has been referred to as the ‘Maltese Falcon of Dylanology’ for its promise as an ‘interpretative key’ to decoding his masterworks.
364. J.D Salinger used a similar system according to his daughter Margaret, as recollected in her book Dream Catcher: A Memoir, (2001).
365. Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, outlined a three-part structure to the unconscious, The Imaginary, The Symbolic, and The Real. The Imaginary is the pre-linguistic world of the image and is rooted in the subject’s relationship with his own body. The Symbolic is the linguistic dimension, our perception of the world defined by language. The Real is outside of language and resists symbolisation absolutely.
366. The Tetragrammaton, meaning ‘to have four letters’, allegedly refers to the true name of God in the Hebrew bible, which ‘should not be spoken’. In the short story, Death and the Compass, by Jorge Luis Borges, a detective is lured to his death by his nemesis after becoming obsessed with solving a mysterious set of murders he connects to the Tetragrammaton, the hidden name of God.
367. Shemhamphorasch, meaning ‘the explicit or interpreted name’, is linked to the Tetragrammaton. In Kabbalah, the term was used to designate a 72-letter name for God, other times a 42-letter name. A 216-letter name for God is found in Jewish Kabbalistic sources (mentioned by Tosafot as well as by the Kabbalists) as well as in Christian Kabbalah and in Hermetic Qabalah, derived from the 72 groups of three letters, each of these triplets being the name of an angel or intelligence. The word, Shemhamphorasch has also been used by the Church of Satan and has been associated with everything from tarot cards and magical grimoires to occult rituals and summoning demons.
368. Sephirot, meaning ‘enumerations’, are the ten attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof (The Infinite) reveals himself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the chain of higher metaphysical realms (Seder hishtalshelus). Number theorists have speculated on a ‘mysterious power’ locked within the numbers and letters, the hidden messages, in the Tetragrammaton, Shemhamphorasch, and Sephirot.
369. Interestingly, this was also a central preoccupation in the work of Maas’s friend RB Kitaj. The painter strongly identified with the writer Franz Kafka’s sense of estrangement and his fascination with hidden mysteries. In the catalogue for Kitaj’s Little Pictures exhibition, these were said to include representations of the Judao-Christian mysteries of the hidden face of God and the artist’s meditation on the Jewish Christ.
370. John Archibald Wheeler (1911 – 2008), a professor at Princeton and a world authority on quantum mechanics, was considered to be one of the ‘monster minds’ of theoretical physics. He was a colleague of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr and coined the terms ‘black hole’ and ‘wormhole’ during his career. Toward the end of his life he developed a particular fascination with the relationship between consciousness and existence.
371. A much-used quote that has been erroneously attributed to everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci, to Paul Valery, to Cezanne – Anonymous.
372. Using technological advances such as X-ray, and other non-invasive techniques, it has been revealed that many famous artists, including Picasso, Van Gogh, Goya, Degas, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and others, painted over previous works to create new masterpieces. Thanks to technological advances, art historians and conservation experts have been able to discover what lies beneath a number of famous paintings without disturbing the original. Techniques include using macro X-ray fluorescence analysis, terahertz radiation, infrared technology, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Famous example of artworks which have been revealed to have other artworks hidden beneath them include Picasso’s Blue Room, and The Old Guitarist, Van Gogh’s Patch of Grass, and Rembrandt’s An Old Man in Military Costume – Anonymous.
373. Paris green consists of copper(II) acetate triarsenite or copper(II) acetoarsenite Cu(C₂H₃O₂)₂·3Cu(AsO₂)₂. Arsenic is among the most toxic substances in the world and, depending on the level of exposure, can cause cancer and death.
374. Bushmills Triple Distilled Irish Whiskey was also the brand of whiskey preferred by the playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett, according to sources.
375. The urban legend of Paul McCartney’s death allegedly started at an American University in 1969 and followed a minor car accident McCartney had been involved with in 1966. Supporters of this theory suggested that playing the song Revolution 9 from The Beatles’ White Album backwards revealed the words “Turn me on, dead man”. This was taken as a clue to McCartney’s alleged death and replacement by a lookalike in 1966. Additional ‘clues’ were John Lennon supposedly saying “I buried Paul” at the end of Strawberry Fields and the symbolism of the cover to the Abbey Road album. Eventually the Beatles press officer and McCartney himself (who had been away from the public eye at the time, living at a Scottish retreat) were forced to deny the rumours, which had quickly grown into an international cult.
376. It may also have been concealed within the work he produced as a child and young adult, but Daniel did not have access to this at the time.
377. Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”, but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random nature in general, as with gambling, paranormal phenomena, religion, and even attempts at scientific observation. It was originally used in relation to the distortion of reality present in psychosis, but it has become more widely used to describe this tendency, without necessarily implying the presence of neurological differences or mental illness.
Respected BBC journalist found dead
14 November 2011
By John Simpson
Tributes have been paid to BBC Head of Arts George Wallas after he was found dead last night.
Mr Wallas, who was described as a ‘towering figure’ in arts and culture journalism by colleagues, was pronounced dead at the scene after police were called to an office on Portland Street, London, in the early hours of Monday 14 March.
Born on the Isle of Skye Mr Wallas began his career as a trainee reporter at the Ardossan and Saltcoats Herald in 1974, going on to work on national newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph in the 1970s and ’80s, before joining the BBC in 1985. He was appointed to the role of Head of Arts in 1990.
BBC Director-General Alan Ross said: “We are heartbroken at the BBC. George was a legend in the industry and a true professional. He loved journalism and he loved the arts. His passion was contagious and his knowledge of the industry was second to none. Our thoughts are with his wife, his two sons, and his grandchildren, at this tragic time.”
James Macdonald, a former colleague of Mr Wallas’s at The Times, said: “George was a larger than life character, barrel-chested and big-hearted. He was a natural-born storyteller who was as funny as he was wise. George was an exceptional journalist, honest and tenacious, and he was a great friend.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said they were not treating the death as suspicious but would like to speak to anyone who had contact with Mr Wallas in the hours before his death.
END
Ezra Maas
Chapter Seven
We have an idea of the world, but we do not have the capacity to show an example of it378
Since he first became famous in the 1960s, Maas had been characterised as “an intensely private and reclusive personality” by the media. Whether this was true or not it was the enduring image of the artist that was held by both press and public. There were very few photographs of him in existence and his personal life was largely unknown, with many people unsure of how old he was, his nationality, or where he was based. Following the news of his sudden and impending marriage to Helena Huston, a well-known figure on the New York and London art world, Maas’s devoted fans were initially outraged that their idol was human after all and feared the relationship would “ruin him”.
They need not have worried. Ironically, his marriage to Helena would signal an even greater retreat from public life than before, as she took control of his business affairs and became the face of the newly-formed Maas Foundation. British-born Helena was an incredibly sophisticated woman who spoke several languages, boasted about having been born during one of her mother’s trips to Bloomingdales, and who had built up a hugely profitable advertising empire in New York. Although she had come from relatively humble beginnings she was now extremely wealthy in her own right and had used her money to purchase several pieces of high-profile art in the 1970s. She was also a regular in glossy magazines on both sides of the Atlantic and was regarded as a fashion icon, thanks to a wardrobe that included French legends such as Dior, Chanel, and Givenchy, with jewellery by the likes of Tiffany & Co, and Van Cleef & Arpels, among others.
Helena had also become the patron of a number of upcoming young artists, such as David Diaz, Michelle Rocha, and John Michael-Vincent – however she unceremoniously dumped this so-called ‘stable’ of artists when she began her relationship with Maas.379 From that point on she worked exclusively with him, using her wealth and extensive contacts in the media and advertising world to effectively become a one-woman PR machine, shielding Maas himself from the press, and public, while bringing together his disparate groups of followers, collaborators, and trusted friends, and turning them into a single worldwide organisation. As one friend notes:
“She was the perfect woman for Maas; beautiful, fiercely intelligent, independent, driven, ruthless, and hugely passionate about him and his work…Helena was happy to devote herself completely to Maas and sublimate herself to his ego and desires…And importantly, from a business perspective, she understood the value of money in a way that Maas didn’t. Accumulating wealth just wasn’t important to him; in fact he saw it as a distraction, but she knew the power and privacy that money could grant them…’380
The marriage ceremony was understandably held in secret although this only increased speculation about its location, with everywhere from the private Denis Island in the Seychelles and the Hayman Island Resort in Australia’s Whitsunday Islands, to the Ulusaba Private Game Reserve in South Africa, and even the Lainio Snow Village in Finland, among the speculated venues. Despite this, the most credible story suggests Maas and Helena married in Oxford at the same church where his parents had married more than thirty years earlier.381 The Maas Foundation’s official description of the marriage, at the time, perhaps tells us more about how the organisation had begun to control the public perception of Maas and his authorised narrative than it does about the reality but it is interesting nonetheless:
“It was the coming together of two great people in a union that gave a renewed strength and energy to both of their lives…”382
The couple were often depicted as eccentric 1930s-style glamour icons by the press, travelling the world, launching new exhibitions, and creating art together, but in truth Maas used Helena’s fame to disappear further into the background. While Maas prepared to begin a new phase of his artistic career, a period that would lead to nominations for The Nobel Prize for Literature and The Turner Prize383 later that decade, Helena also indulged her own interest in becoming a painter. She converted one of the rooms of their manor house into a studio space and often worked alongside Maas. A friend of the couple, Geoff Laidler, said:
“Although the public perception of Maas depicted an intense loner, he was in no way an isolated individual…Gorhambury Manor was constantly full of people, full of artists, working, living, and creating together…it was communal and democratic…every room in the house becoming another potential studio, another space to create art, from the large ballroom sized living-room to the stables and, at the centre of it all, Helena and Maas could often be seen working side by side…”384
Officially, Maas never left his studio-home during this period, but other sources say different. There were Maas sightings across Europe and America throughout these years. One such instance placed him at the last public reading by the poet Charles Bukowski at the Sweetwater Club in Redondo Beach, California, in March 1980. Bukowski was living in the San Pedro area at the time with his future wife Linda, who was a devotee of Meher Baba, leader of an Indian religious society. Maas had written several positive pieces about Bukowski when he was a teenager and was known to have enjoyed his novels from the 1970s, such as Post Office and Factotum. The Maas Journals from this period do not mention the trip to Redondo Beach but do feature a quote by Bukowski, which Maas clearly liked. The quote, originally used in one of Bukowski’s poems and explained in a letter from the writer to John William Corrington, outlines the writer’s advice to aspiring artists. As you would expect from the so-called ‘poet laureate of American lowlife’, his words are unconventionally wise. Bukowski simply says “Don’t Try.”385
This was followed by a number of other sightings of Maas, including alleged visits to see Hunter S Thompson at his Owl Farm ranch in Woody Creek, Aspen,386 and William Burroughs, in New York, but it is difficult to know which, if any, are legitimate due to The Maas Foundation’s insistence that he never left Gorhambury Manor for more than a few hours in the early 1980s, following his marriage to Helena. One of the possible reasons for this, beyond his artistic seclusion and interest in privacy, was reportedly Helena’s fears for her husband’s safety, particularly following John Lennon’s death in December 1980.387 Jules Singer, who worked for an exclusive private security firm in the 1980s that specialised in protecting celebrities and briefly consulted with Helena about her needs, said:
“After Lennon’s death Helena was terrified about someone attempting to kill Maas, but in the end the Foundation decided to handle security themselves. Gorhambury Manor was heavily guarded, but from what I gathered Maas may have been somewhere else entirely…”388
In many ways, the decade to come would be characterised by the death of a number of high-profile and hugely influential artists such as Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, two men often associated with Maas’s legacy and the profound impact of AIDS on the art world. However, the ’80s also featured at least one unexpected resurrection, namely the re-emergence of painting and return to power of wealthy art collectors. While the AIDS epidemic, the second Cold War, the ‘Wall Street’ boom, and the Reagan and Thatcher years would dominate socio-political headlines, in the art world it was the decade of the dealer.
Financial deregulation had a significant impact on the art world. Buying art was big business and prices skyrocketed as a result. Wealthy private collectors, such as Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo and Peter Ludwig, internationally, and Charles and Doris Saatchi,389 in the UK, had a huge influence on the market. As a result Maas was in safe hands, with his new wife Helena guiding his career and managing his financial interests. Many artists benefited from the economic boom and became hugely wealthy, but thanks to Helena, Maas joined the same rare financial company as Picasso.
Helena thrived in her self-imposed role as promoter of the Maas ‘brand’. She was quick to capitalise on the increased wealth and affluence in the 1980s and succeeded in increasing her husband’s art sales by a huge amount during this period, including high-profile deals with a number of American investors, such as Wall Street mogul Gerald Green and Greenwich hedge fund manager Steve Goldman, for a reported $12million (£6.5m). She also personally arranged sales with Sheik Khalid-Hamadi, the Emir of Qatar, for a sum rumoured to be in the region of $30m.390 Alongside her own career, as an artist, Helena also worked tirelessly to organise and curate dozens of exhibitions of Maas’s work during the 1980s, at galleries such as the Tate Modern, Gagosian, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rijksmuseum, and Serpentine Gallery, among others. It wasn’t just about money, however; it was about staying relevant. One of the ways Helena went about achieving this was to market Maas’s work to the MTV generation. She negotiated the use of his work in music videos, including images and text, and arranged for collaborations with emerging bands and musicians.
